resonated with me that tom said, if you simply tolerate diversity you are aspiring to mediocrity. can you talk about the ambassadors, adults taking an active role to intervene when we witness bullying. >> all of us are humbled by the virus, how systemic it's become. how do you get your hands around that? for me it's top down and bottom up. we are authority figures and what we do for our children and that's care, but we need to empower them to become the leaders they are waiting to become. this notion of youth adult partnership is esoteric in its term but on the ground how do you operationalize it, those things in the public school who are

working so hard to meet the required mandates. schools are driven by mandates, academic achievement, achievement, enrollment. but the conditions in which the virus grows, if you follow the metaphor that bullying is a systemic virus, then the environment has to change so the virus cannot grow and the only way the environment changes is if youth and adults begin to speak with one voice about changing the social norms that allows it to happen. it makes sense to most of us, you have it khaifrpb the social norms. we must educate. but we must go beyond thinking more rigor will get us better achievement. we have to remember a school is a community and in a xhuept, people look out for each other. they've got each other's back. how do we begin to promote that idea that we are in this thing together?

we believe it's through, unfortunately but truly, self-interest. kids are driven developmentally by the desire to fit in, to belong, to be part of an affinity group. if we can capitalize on their desire to look out for their friends and give them some more tools and opportunities and support, they will begin to do what we need them to do to at least confront it in their own small cell of social influence and the compounding and leveraging of that begins to make change. so the question we have to ask ourselves, are we as adults willing it slow down enough to invite kids to sit down at the table with us and partner? do we have the courage to understand that inclusion takes time and we have have to work more diligently to i invite young people, particularly marginalized young people, to take part. >> you mentioned changing

social norms and i would imagine, stacy, part of that is powerful role models and so i think that that's a lot about the work that you are doing with the san francisco giants. so can you talk a bit about how you see the san francisco giants as being those role models and playing an active role and being upstanders? >> part of it is the role model stand point and using baseball as a hook to get people's attention. when we have a captive audience of 40,000 people plus a wide tell television and radio audience, we use that to get across the message about an issue. sometimes we get letters, hey, i came to see a game with my son and instead i'm hearing about a murder committee in

yosemite and that's a downer of a way to start the day. sometimes that's a tough conversation with a fan but at least at the end of the day they've taken something away with them. also at the grass roots level we have a junior giants program, it's a youth baseball program throughout california. we use baseball as the hook to get kids to come together to learn about teamwork, we have a whole can urriculum that's based on the importance of reading, literacy, education, we have a whole violence prevention can urriculum, we have 22,000 kids playing baseball throughout northern california, junior giants baseball, and we have a number of volunteer coaches and commissioners and one of the things that we ask every year our junior giants players to do is to take the peace pledge. it's basically the pledge is i'm a junior giant, i pledge to strike out violence by, and the

first line is prevent bullying and respecting my teammates, coaches, family and friends. so at the peer grass roots level where we have coaches working closely with kids we hope to spread a message, we also have an art contest, imagine peace where we honor kids at a ballgame later in the year just so kids can interpret and show their form of how they interpret anti-bullying and peace in this society. you know, it's not perfect, it doesn't always work. i think sometimes people tune us out. but we feel strongly that with the partnerships that we have in the community we can make an impact and i think there's a bias or there's an assumption in sports that it's a homophobic industry, it's almost like that man bites dog,

people look up and say, wait a minute, that's not the way to do things. >> we have talked about policy, legal, now you hear about organizations doing boots on the ground and doing work in their communities. michael, you said something interesting, that family can sometimes not be a positive influence. let's get micro, what influences do you draw upon, what influenced you to become an antibias aspect, personal or family, aspects of your own cultural identity? >> okay, being the eldest of three and a vietnamese family is very difficult. throw in being gay, it makes it a lot more stressful. and throw in being clinically labeled as obese at age 13, you have a recipe for bullying and discrimination all over. so that was me. and it was hard and it wasn't

until someone took a chance on me and mr. burket saved my life. there are moments where i've been in the shoes where my youth have been. if it wasn't for mr. burket, i wouldn't be here and i wouldn't be able to provide the services that i provide my youth today. that's why i do it. that's why i'm a program coordinator at the wellness center, that's why i co-chair gay asian, that's why i sit on the wellness committee of san francisco. it's a way for me to give back. i hope that answers your question and thank you for allowing me to be a panelist. >> rick, amina or stacy, anything you with like to share from your personal experiences? ?oo >> speaking about your personal life in front of people you know or don't know isn't always an easy thing, you wouldn't know by looking at me

but i'm an immigrant. i wasment born in the united statesment i came to this country, to california, when i was a 10-year-old with a single mother and two small brothers living in a motel. my first experience at public school, i must have had a kick me sign on my back because being difficult, as you would understand, made me a target and that imprint stayed with me for many years and guided me in a very dysfunctional angry self-loathing kind of way as many children do. today, 160,000 kids are not in public school because they are afraid of what someone might say or do to them. so that lives in me and like some of you and your own stories, i was fortunate enough to use it to become a teacher, a principal, and assistant superintendent of public schools and now a nonprofit director whose single mission is to do what we're doing to make sure kids go to school where they feel safe and included. one of my personal stories of value, it helps to connect us because, i don't want to speak

in cliche, but it's harder it -- to hate somebody when you know their story. common ground doesn't necessarily make us best friends but we start to thread community and we find acceptance for differences and compassion. today isn't about me, today is about do we have the courage it leave here today and not just say it was an interesting day, that each of us in this room is going to be inspired enough to take action, each one reaching one, and that's the only reason i would take the time to share a personal story is to know that you can walk out here and right now, today, we can make a difference. >> you know, i think we have a group of very powerful leaders here today. i think to build on what rick was really saying about taking some of the negative experiences that he had, that mike had growing up, and use them to power forward

and use them to build some amazing organizations and we all want people in this room to do something. but there are limitations, limitations to your organization's capacity it reach more people, to roll out your can urriculum and to get your programs in more places. can you talk a little bit about what they are and what people in this room can do to help? amina, you want to get us started? >> sure. in your packets you should have our program that we have locally in the bay area and we also have affiliated across the country in many areas. our dream would be to have a similar program to ours in every city in the united states. obviously that takes time, our speakers are volunteers, they aren't paid. it may take 4 or 5 hours to go

into schools so resources are always an issue. many schools are afraid to invite speakers in to talk about any religion, but particularly islam, there's not always a clear understanding to what the first amendment guarantees, which is the right to teach about a religion but not proselytize about it. i think there's fear of associating with anyone associated with islam. there are events outside our control that creates more interest and unfortunately also makes people more afraid. one of the programs we are about to launch is putting all our content online so a teacher in north dakota where there are no muslim, potentially, no expert can come to her classroom, they can go to our web site and download the content and teach the things we are teaching. >> i think partnerships are

the best way to overcome the limitations because we all have limitations. and sometimes it's just visibility. we actually have on our web site 50 short films and one of them is a muslim student from a school in fremont going to a school in arinda talking about what it's like going to school as a muslim in the united states and they are asking questions and you see we are all kids in school and we have more similarities than differences. i think by partnering there are so many ways that we can spread these ideas because ultimately we're talking about a cultural shift. so we're all limited by our financial resources and by who knows about us, but as we partner together and i say this to all of us in this room because that's basically what rick is challenging us to do is to not

let this day stop here but walk out of here and work together to make differences. the bay area can really be a leader in that way. >> partnerships and resources. anyone else want to raise a few other ideas regarding limitations? >> yeah, the schools again are driven by i think 3 things: pain and what's going on needs and mandates and also leadership of the people in the buildings and behind the buildings. so one of the things that many of us here understand that the environment or what we call the climate influences outcomes but often times in public schools where decisions are made, climate and educational mandates are perceived as two opposite ends of the continuum, like when i have time and i've achieved my test scores and we've got everything buttoned up, then we'll get to the klie mallet.

we've heard it from speaker after speaker, that conditions set the stage for children to leeb lean in and achieve. the good news is we can move bullying out of the front page not with more dollars but with more changes in our attitudes and our interactions. if more teachers perceive themselves to be call friendly and know the names of boys and girls in their buildings, part of it is reeducation that climate and environment and changing social norms is not secondary, it's primary and when we all embrace that then we'll begin to see the changes in the policies and the practices and we'll begin to get the results we want. we need to advocate for improving

the social climates of our public schools, not more rigor, more relationships. better relationships. >> something that has come up in some disparate ways today is bullying and cyber bullying but we've seen the line between the two has blurred quite a bit. it's harder for schools to deal with things happening in an out of school context. a really recent example of that are the mob protests in the middle east right now that are going on that some say were sparked by an antimuslim video that was put online and went viral. i wonder if any of your programs how you are dealing with the interconnectedness between what's happening in the online world and then what's happening in the offline world and the connection between hate speech and online bullying with what's happening in classrooms and communities.

>> not in our town works with communities all over the country. so we use the internet in many positive ways and then we also get a lot of those hostile comments coming in to us as well, which we block. but there's a town, marshaltown, iowa, that recently did a not in our town, not in our community, article on this topic. the newspaper editor was tired of all those negative comments that come in to the newspaper because you see them under the article. at the same time in sioux falls, a town close to them, that had a suicide and the whole community came together to take a positive approach and that kind of combines the two things, looking at how we treat each other online as well as how we treat each other on the community. you can go to our wepb site and see the progression as the whole

community came together, the school district, the city, the library and they all worked together saying this isn't what we want in our town and they are being very proactive. another thing is we work with students and they came up with a positive campaign on facebook that they did, we have a little film on cyber bullying where some students in new jersey came together and they called it a virtual hug. they tried to basically bring that positive environment to the internet because kids are sort of shifting that culture. we also want to shift the culture on the internet. >> mike or stacy, rick, amina, anything regarding social media, not just the connection with bullying but how you can use social media for positive ends. >> i think again we have the message to spread our message,

we have a million facebook followers, we have twitter. we tried to turn that into a positive in terms of getting the message out beyond the ballpark or junior giants. i always see it as a positive from a public awareness stand point. but as a parent it scares the beejesus out of me because i think what you see in cyber bullying is it allows the bully to be anonymous. you don't have ownership of what you do online. from the giants perspective there's a lot of opportunity to educate kids through junior giants and serving as role models with our players to spread the message about all bullying, not just what you do in the hallway or the classroom, but all bullying, including online, is unacceptable. as parents trying to teach kids about the boundaries of the social media

world and respecting people in all ways. >> i'd just like to first of all begin by condemning the violence and mourning the death of a wonderful friend to arabs and muslims, i knew people who knew him, he was a cal grad like myself. the irony is you are killing a fripd. but that's the nature of mob violence and the ideology of hate. and unfortunately hate begets hate and that's what we're really seeing on both sides. put out an inflammatory film and people who are willing to do the dance who will confirm what the film is saying and when does this cycle end? we see this in schools as well, unfortunately. we see it on the internet way too much as you mentioned. look at any article, i am most familiar with articles about muslims but it seems like something happens to people when they go on the net, they turn into horrible people and say horrible things because nobody knows who they are. i think it obviously begins in

the home, computers should be in open spaces, parents should have the ability to see what their children are doing and this goes through high school and then just the environment that we create in our schools and our communities where it's not cool to be doing these things. i think the machismo that feeds into these actions needs to be stopped on every level. we're really in uncharted territory here. balancing the first amendment with the right of people to live their lives without fear. >> before we go to q and a from the audience, a quick word from our sponsors. >> sorry to interrupt but we want to keep the day moving quickly. to smeed up the

lunch service, please remove your bags from the tables. water and refreshments are available. lunch will begin promptly at 12.30 so please make sure everything is off your table so the servers can facilitate a quick luncheon service and we'll get on with our program. sorry to interrupt. >> so any questions from the audience? did we have someone with a microphone? go ahead. >> i'll go first. i completely agree with what you said about everything against bullying, everything against all the misconceptions, the lack of education, it all has to begin with community. let me introduce myself, i am a

regional director for region 6 and also an ob-gyn physician, also a physician. one of the things that i have come across, having dealt with in my education and everything else, is that the school itself is a huge community for the kids and if we leave that community out of the picture and focus just on the family and the outside community and teaching everybody else and not making sure our teachers get the diversity training, we are missing a big point in that picture. for example, my kids went to private school, this is the first year they are going to public school, and we listed punjabi as the language spoken at home and we got so many calls from the school just to make sure the kids would come in, they are proficientin

english. they know english but we got at least 3 phone calls and messages left on our answering machines. why is it these schools do not list the diverse population of students coming in and actually have a parents day where they talk about and give them a little spiel on diversity, information on the culture? that information goes back to the home and there is misconceptions being perpetuated at home. i think it all starts with the responsibility. where is accountability for the schools it play a huge role not only in bullying but also making sure the diversity goes back home. >> really important to have that partnership between home and school. anyone on the panel like to address that? >> there's a term i like to use, it's called identity safety. identify safety means not having your identify taken from you. we think of identify safety on the computers and our credit cards and stuff, but

actually if you have to walk in and leave your identity at the door, it's being stolen from you. so identity safety is what we naed to make a priority in our schools. it means getting to know each other's backgrounds, it means valuing each other's backgrounds and getting the parents involved. i think the schools are doing that to different degrees and we have to keep working to build that relationship. ironically i was an english language developer and they are calling you to make sure that your children have access to the supports you need, but ironically it comes across backward. anyone who has a second language listed gets checked with to be sure they have the services they need. >> right here. >> so i've been taking notes and one of the things that i run a community center in the western addition and we talk about educating and supporting and one of the things that comes it my mind off the top is

really talking to the people that are doing the bullying and understanding hurt people hurt people, right? as we're talking about this, there are two pieces and i'm wondering how do you integrate, we all talk about the finances and making things happen, but one is the mental health piece, the part about understanding where it's coming from, talking about a culture or a community, that's what they are used to. you tell people not to do that but as a child all you've heard is negativity and you've been beat up on and they talk bad to you. it's not just from one workshop you are going to change the mindset, how do we understand the mentality. the other is understanding the online/offline. we had alonzo

coming in and speaking to us, they don't understand the impact, it's not enough for me to say we're going to do a workshop or a campaign, a poster thing, it's really about how do we change the culture of a community and a people and it's not just a one-off. >> what does it take? >> the thing about changing the environment again, changing the social norms, it helps to understand there are primarily about 5 different ways we can influence and warm the climate of a school or community, students being one, families and parents, staff, policies and young people themselves. if we can understand that strategickly, sort of get down out of the big conversation and look at ways how do we, as you said, educate the educators, make sure they receive the education and understand that relationships are as important as the classroom can urriculum, especially at the secondary

level, continue to hammer out policies that are not so punitive but restore we want to connect to correct. we don't want to punish. we often move kids from one environment it another but it doesn't help them make right and it doesn't help others. this is a systemic problem, it's not going to go away. but we can begin and we are, the people on this panel, those of you in this room, we're taking incremental steps. but one of the things we have to do is keep organizing ourselves and understanding the coordinated integrated way so services aren't bolted on, added on and become just a one and done in too many schools. it's got to be really embraced as what we call a whole school climate framework, a whole school climate improvement plan. and when we embrace that, everybody can come to the table and take what can i do? each one teach one, each one reach

one, we change policy, we change practices, we change values. there is a map, there is a way we can do it. we're already doing it, let's not lose sight of it, but we have to be more focused, more clear and more collaborative and not forget to really empower our children. they are our best hope for changing the world. >> hello, my name is chris bridges. i'm grappling with trying to address several things that i've heard during the course of this program. i'll try to keep it as brief as possible. it's more of a statement than a question. a lot of people have mentioned power, the power balance between people and the trauma that people can bring in from outside and the significance of being traumatized and traumatizing other people and it also talked

about restoretive justice being a model. i know we're in a room filled with district attorneys and police officers, law enforcement. i'm curious what role law enforcement can play in restoretive justice, what can be imparted as groups of people who may or may not be connected with the trauma. once you are traumatized by the school, politicians, et cetera, et cetera, then you have more of these power dynamic things going on in your head, i'm going to exert whatever power i have on these people, i'm interested in hearing about the restoretive power that we want